[GIS] Generating very simple slippy map tiles

openstreetmap

I have an app that uses slippy maps. The tiles I'm currently using contain a lot of information that is superfluous to my users.

I've been investigating generating replacement map tiles that contain only very basic features such as country/province boundaries, rivers, lakes, EEZ lines (the application focuses more on water than land) and maybe railways and major motorways when at high zoom levels.

First I tried loading planet.osm.bz2 (a 21GB file) into Maperitive. This appeared to be a bad idea as the process memory usage rose quickly beyond that which my machine could tolerate. I've tried again on smaller files (such as Antarctica alone) and have more success, but I really need to generate tiles for the entire Earth.

Most of the features in these large OSM data files are not of interest to me.

Can someone please recommend an approach that should run on my x64 Win7 PC with 4GB RAM?

Best Answer

Maperitive only works with small map areas, not the whole planet, since it loads all of the map data into RAM. If you need to cover the whole Earth, you should use Mapnik or TileMill.

Related Solutions

[GIS] Slippy map format

I think what you want to do is make a slippy map, right?

This is very easy with Leaflet and GeoServer, so long as you only want to view information.

In GeoServer, style a layer, and test it. Then, with Leaflet, add the layer from GeoServer via WMS. Example is included below, replace all the with your values:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://cdn.leafletjs.com/leaflet-0.5/leaflet.css" />
<!--[if lte IE 8]>
 <link rel="stylesheet" href="http://cdn.leafletjs.com/leaflet-0.5/leaflet.ie.css" />
<![endif]-->

<script src="http://cdn.leafletjs.com/leaflet-0.5/leaflet.js"></script>

<div id="map"  style="width: 800px; height: 600px"></div>

<script>
    var center = new L.LatLng(<LAT>,<LON>);
    var map = new L.Map('map', { center: center, zoom: 14, attributionControl:true, zoomControl:false});   
    var gi = new L.TileLayer.WMS("http://<SERVER>:8080/geoserver/gwc/service/wms", {
        layers: '<WORKSPACE>:<LAYER NAME>',
        format: 'image/png',
        maxZoom: 20
    }).addTo(map)
</script>

If you actually want vectors, consider carefully why. You can achieve it using tileJSON, but it isn't simple. You can query the WMS layer, though, and highlight individual features, which is quite nice!

[GIS] Generating MapQuest Style tiles for offline use

I would suggest you to use mapnik (uses style XML) to pre-render map tiles from osm data stored in postreSQL(postgis) using gdal and these rendered tiles can be accessed using openlayers.

If you need details I can help you out to configure all :)

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[GIS] Slippy map format

[GIS] Generating MapQuest Style tiles for offline use

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